Bank’s Phone Charges Are Taking Their Toll

If I didn’t know the years had crept up on me, I know it now. And guess what taught me? Laguna Beach Security Pacific Bank. And through my telephone bill, of all places.

My bill showed toll charges I couldn’t identify. Research revealed the telephone company was billing me for calls to the Laguna Beach branch of the Security Pacific Bank. (I live in Laguna Beach.) Charges this month ranged from $.15 to $2.70. Sure that these charges were in error, I called the bank.

I was courteously enough informed that the Security Pacific bank had no toll-free number for customers wanting account information even though the call originated in Laguna Beach. As if to justify this unseemly corporate behavior, he righteously added that most big banks have the same policy.

Nobody’s going bankrupt paying the bank for information on their own accounts. But it does seem unconscionable for the banking community, supported mainly as it is by its borrowers and depositors, to squeeze those that support it. And in such a chicken way.

TOM ALEXANDER

Laguna Beach